When the Game Stands Tall
Directed by: Thomas Carter
Written by: Scott Marshall Smith - story by Scott Marshall Smith and David Zelon - based on the book by Neil Hayes
Starring: Jim Caviezel, Michael Chiklis, Alexander Ludwig, Laura Dern, Clancy Brown, Ser'Darius Blain, Stephan James, Matthew Daddario, Joe Massingill, Jessie Usher, Matthew Frias, Richard Kohnke
Drama/Sport - 115 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 21 August 2014
Written by: Scott Marshall Smith - story by Scott Marshall Smith and David Zelon - based on the book by Neil Hayes
Starring: Jim Caviezel, Michael Chiklis, Alexander Ludwig, Laura Dern, Clancy Brown, Ser'Darius Blain, Stephan James, Matthew Daddario, Joe Massingill, Jessie Usher, Matthew Frias, Richard Kohnke
Drama/Sport - 115 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 21 August 2014
Sometimes, a sports drama just comes together. The script, the acting, the score, you name it, it works. No, I’m not talking about When the Game Stands Tall where almost nothing works. I’m talking about Rudy. Rudy has nothing to do with When the Game Stands Tall, but walking out the theater, I reminisced about what a great football movie based on a true story is like. Why is When the Game Stands Tall so different? Imagine a full season of Friday Night Lights side plots shoved into two hours. Imagine if Oprah produced a story about the most successful football team of all time full of life lessons and bumper sticker platitudes about teamwork and brotherhood. When the Game Stands Tall is more after school special than impactful sports movie.
Based on the book by Neil Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall covers the De La Salle High School football team of Concord, California. From 1992 to 2003, De La Salle High School did not lose a single football game. Coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) coached his boys both on the field and off, through the pinnacle of victory and through daily life tragedies. The film focuses on the final winning season and the beginning of the next season when the team starts to lose. Along the way, we get a heart attack, a shooting, individuality over team togetherness, and helicopter parents who need another hobby other than high school football.
Based on the book by Neil Hayes, When the Game Stands Tall covers the De La Salle High School football team of Concord, California. From 1992 to 2003, De La Salle High School did not lose a single football game. Coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) coached his boys both on the field and off, through the pinnacle of victory and through daily life tragedies. The film focuses on the final winning season and the beginning of the next season when the team starts to lose. Along the way, we get a heart attack, a shooting, individuality over team togetherness, and helicopter parents who need another hobby other than high school football.
Do not walk into When the Game Stands Tall expecting a series of football montages and intense game footage. There are those scenes, but they are far outweighed by the film’s spirituality. It appears De La Salle is a parochial school with religion classes focusing on the Gospels’ discussion of those who do good things will reap the rewards. It is no shock when one of the main characters from the poorer side of town throws this lesson back in Coach’s face during a time of adversity. The juxtaposition of the tenets of classroom theological discussions and their relevance to the football field also comes off as heavy-handed.
Coach Ladouceur must have done something right to guide a team to 151 straight victories. He encouraged togetherness and sacrificing the self for the greater good. Charting the transition from winning team to last in the pack, the film follows the 2004 graduating class, who leave as victors, and the incoming 2005 seniors, who enter as entitled individuals focused on personal stat records instead of focusing on the man next to them. In real life, as in the film, you usually do not see your classmates after graduation. You ship off to various colleges or careers and that’s it. The same goes for the seniors we grow to know in the film. One minute they are all over the screen, and the next, we have a whole new crop of fresh faces to learn.
The shift is abrupt but the persistent melodrama attempts to drown us out in sorrow and rueful times so perhaps we won’t notice the switch so much. There is also an extremely out of place and over the top visit to a VA center full of wounded soldiers recovering from missing limbs and PTSD. Our self-obsessed seniors are blatantly supposed to learn life lessons in an afternoon of sponge baths and awkward run-ins with the those folks overcoming a different type of adversity.
Director Thomas Carter is no stranger to the sports drama; he directed 2005’s Coach Carter. Carter knows how to film suspenseful football from the sidelines. The crunch of shoulder pads and helmets are effective and the tense on field situations come across as some enjoyable movie football. The biggest game of the film is not a championship match, but a chance to play the nation’s number one team. This highlight is about 75% of the way through the film. Everything after this game feels like an unnecessary coda. How can the audience still have 20-30 minutes left after the climax?
The final championship game is supposed to be the climax, but ask anyone who sees the film and they will tell you it does not come off that way. When the Game Stands Tall wants to be about the spiritual side of football. It strives to portray the invisible ties that bind between gridiron brothers. It fails on all counts. The melodrama is contrived and cliché. Of course someone is going to get hurt, of course Coach will fight with his wife about not moving up to the collegiate level, and of course about a dozen other rip-off plots. When the Game Stands Tall may be based on a true story, but it is also blatantly based on about 10 other far superior sports dramas.
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